WhatsApp Founder Story – Success Story of WhatsApp | Successful Entrepreneur Stories & Startup Journey - Entrepreneurship PDF Download

WhatsApp, the largest messaging app in the world was founded by Jan Koum and Brian Acton and was then was bought by Facebook Inc for US $19 billion in February 2014.
WhatsApp offers free and secure messaging and calling, available on phones all over the world. In over 180 countries, more than 2 billion people use Whatsapp to stay in touch with friends and family, anytime and anywhere. The WhatsApp founder story is very inspiring and motivational. With millions of users, who are addicted to WhatsApp, It is very important to know the success story of WhatsApp.

Jan Koum and Brian Acton

Jan Koum is an American internet inventor and computer programmer who was born on 24 February 1976. He belongs to a Jewish family in Kyiv, Ukraine. Brian Acton, on the other hand, is an internet entrepreneur and co-founded WhatsApp with Jan Koum. Currently, he acts as the executive chairman of the single foundation, which is co-founded along with Moxie Marlinspike in the year 2018.

Childhood Days

Jan Koum’s childhood days were not that easy as one might think. He was destitute and he had difficulty in making both ends meet. He was born in Ukraine, but he migrated to the United States along with his mother and grandmother. He suffered from great difficulty in the new country, and the situation became worst when his mother became ill and got diagnosed with cancer, and eventually passed away. But he didn’t stop. He worked hard and got a job at Yahoo as an infrastructure engineer. While he was still attending college.

Idea of WhatsApp

Brian Acton was also another employee at Yahoo. Brian formed a rapport with Jan Koum to form long-term collaboration in the future. After working for several years at Yahoo. Koum and Acton left the company to research out more avenues in social media. Jan and Brian’s love for social media helped them in developing the best messaging app, WhatsApp. 

Now, It is one of the most popular messaging apps. They both left yahoo in September 2007, and took a year off, and started traveling around South America and playing frisbee. They both tried to work at Facebook but failed to do so, as their application was rejected by Facebook.  One day in February, Koum bought an iPhone, and after evaluating the app store, and he discovered that there was a space for messaging apps. They both then visited their friend called Alex Fisherman and talked about developing a messaging app. They developed WhatsApp in coffee shops and at their homes. And in just a few years the app was worth a billion dollars.

The name WhatsApp was chosen by Koum because it sounded like “what’s up”. On his birthday, February 14, 2009, he incorporated WhatsApp Inc. in California. Thus, WhatsApp was successfully launched by Brian and Jan, with customers satisfaction as their main goal. WhatsApp founder story is one of the inspirational stories of all time.

Charity Work

Whatever happened in Jan’s life taught him the importance of giving back. So, he started charity works, which are mentioned below.

• He donated $556 million to the Silicon Valley Community Foundation in 2014.
• He donated $1.5 million to the free BSD Foundation from 2014-16.
• Brian and his wife Tegan Acton started an organization that provided basic services to children in the age of 0-4 years with low-income families.

Inspirational Quotes by Jan Koum

Well, how can we end this article on the Success Story of WhatsApp without some inspirational quotes by Jan Koum? So, here they are.

• I want to do one thing and do it well.
• I grew up in a country where advertising does not exist.
• When advertising is involved, you, the user, are the product
• We’ve taken SMS technology for consumers and improved it.
• Communication is the very core of our society. That’s what makes us human.